Page:Swahili tales.djvu/79

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
SULTAN DARAI.
59

half an eighth, and this man, who you told me was poor and destitute utterly, with nothing before and nothing behind him, he has been able to lighten my load, and you great gentlemen couldn't even to so much as half an eighth."

The poor man received his gazelle and went away there to the dustheap, he and his gazelle in his hand; and he stooped down, scratching there in the dustheap, and got grains of mtama to put in his mouth, and got a little more of grains of mtama and gave to his gazelle. And he took his way and went off, and went to his house, there where the kitanda was on which he lay; and he spread his sleeping-mat and laid down, he and his gazelle together. When the night turned to dawn, he got up and took his gazelle and went to the dustheap there, and scratched and got grains of mtama: what he got, as much as one could grasp in one's hand, he put in his mouth, and what were left he gave to his gazelle. And he arose and went to his house: and so about five days passed.

And the gazelle spoke in the night, and called him, "Master!" Its master answered, "Here!" and he said, "How is it that I see a wonder?"

The gazelle asked, "What is this wonder which you have seen to make you startled, and to make you faint, and to put yourself all into confusion?"

And he said, "This that I see is not small, that you, a gazelle, should speak."

And it said, "You do not accept the mercy of God."

And he said, "From the beginning of my fathers and mothers, and all the people that are in the world, I never heard any one man tell me of a gazelle that knew how to speak."

"Well, do not you be astonished; Almighty God is able to do all things—to make me to speak, and others more